


There’s a Fine Fine Line Between You’re Wonderful and Goodbye

by lilsmartass



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Break Up, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Spoilers, F/M, Iron Man 3 Spoilers, Really guys, Romance, Unrequited, no, phase 2 compliant, this is very sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-25
Updated: 2014-04-25
Packaged: 2018-01-20 18:35:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1521254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilsmartass/pseuds/lilsmartass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary: And then his eyes met Bruce’s/Steve’s/Clint’s across a room and they lived happily ever after. But once upon a time, Tony had a girlfriend. The Pepper/Tony break up scene.<br/>Phase 2 compliant - Captain America: The Winter Soldier spoilers, read at your own risk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There’s a Fine Fine Line Between You’re Wonderful and Goodbye

**Author's Note:**

> Rating: PG-13 for some swearing  
> Disclaimer: Not mine unfortunately, but I own a very nice Iron Man wobble head, a Captain America necklace and yesterday, I made an Avengers themed coaster. Does that count? Story title from an Avenue Q song.  
> Warning/Spoilers: ANGST and breaking up of a canon relationship, brief reference to infidelity (NOT MAIN CHARACTERS). As this is phase 2 compliant THERE ARE SOME MINOR REFERENCES TO THE EVENTS OF CAPTAIN AMERICA 2.  
> Genre: Angst, romance (I guess, does break up still count as romance?)  
> Beta: Unbeta’d. All mistakes are mine.

**There’s a Fine Fine Line Between _You’re Wonderful_ and _Goodbye_**

  
 

Tony knows it’s coming. He’s a genius after all. He might not be hot at human interaction, but that when he’s in the moment, that’s when he’s actually talking _to_ (instead of _at_ ) people. When he’s just analysing incidents and extrapolating what will happen next based on his observations…that’s just _math_. Yeah, he knows it’s coming.

He deals with it like he always does when he knows something he doesn’t want to think about is as inevitable as the next eclipse, like he always does when he’s terrified.

He invents. _SI goes up a dozen stock points overnight and next quarter the profits would be enough to make him a billionaire a dozen times over if he wasn’t already, see he is worth keeping._

He overcompensates and the rabbit that he _knows_ was too much, he apologised for that already, gets a mouse, a hedgehog and some candy pink thing that’s shaped like a swan to be friends with. _Buying your girlfriend stuffed animals is good, right, and Pepper’s always found his non-dangerous ways of irritating her endearing._

He drinks too much and doesn’t come to bed those nights. _He needs her to look after him and keep him steady, but he doesn’t want to hurt her because alcohol always makes him an asshole._

He lets her talk him into going to the Benefits and Events that he knows she only brings to his attention out of habit and then flirts with everyone there, eyefucking the ones that pay him the slightest bit of attention. _Nothing more than lingering looks and words and the occasional piece of outlandish innuendo because he won’t be any more like the man who sent his mother to bed in tears the nights he came home with a girl barely out of grad school (and barely in whatever skintight outfit she was wearing), than the ideas in his head and the glass in his hand already make him._

He makes another suit.

He tells himself it’s an academic exercise at first. Tells himself he’s just seeing if that stealth idea of the kid’s had any merit, but isn’t long before he’s wearing it. At first just to fly, invisible, above the oceans and the cities and his worries spread out beneath him.

It’s not like he can just ignore the bank robbery happening beneath him. _And it isn’t his fault one of them had a gun. It’s not like a regular bullet does anything worse than chip the paint. He puts the armour back in the workshop, buffs out the dent and calls out the authorities to do clean up anonymously, none of them recognise him without the red and gold anyway, and why would Iron Man be in Chicago._

It’s not like he could just let that train hit the little girl who was obliviously trying to talk a stray cat off the track. _Alright, so the train clips him and caves in the chest piece so badly that he has a whole new reason to be grateful he doesn’t have a reactor anymore. Pepper looks doubtful when he tells her it was Dummy, but the girl’s been sworn to secrecy and she’s too young to be using twitter or facebook and who listens to a seven year old that says they saw a superhero?_

It’s not like he could just let the debris of three helicarriers hit DC and not even try to help. _At least Cap is glad to see him, though when the second camera crew turns up he knows that there’s no hiding it this time._

He throws himself into panic driven actions, planning a whirlwind of romantic dinners and exotic trips. He showers Pepper with gifts, with texts, with amusing selfies. Anything to distract her. Anything to prove that she’s in his mind all the time. _He starts designing the tower to accommodate Fury’s superhero boyband. Forming the Avengers was the one eyed bastard’s last wish, he can use that fact to leverage Cap and Hawkeye and Romanov into making sure that he isn’t all his own after it happens._

Pepper, of course, is so much braver than he is. _She deserves so much better._

She’s too classy, too _good_ to do it when she’s angry. She doesn’t throw a paper with him in the latest suit at him and demand to know why he lied to her, she doesn’t say anything about the increased training he’s started doing with Happy – though the pinched lines around her mouth and huge worried eyes tell him she’s noticed, she doesn’t object to the fact that Bruce came to stay for a week to make sure that there were no ill-effects from the surgery and is still in the guest suite.

Instead, she stops in the doorway, looking at the table he’s set, hair glinting in the candlelight – Pepper looks beautiful always, but in candle light she is beauty personified – and looks so sad, that Tony knows then it will be tonight. She sits opposite him and picks up her glass. He watches, hypnotised, silent like he so rarely is. When she settles it back on the table the slight noise of glass on wood sounds like a gunshot.

Tony takes her hand across the table, smiles brightly, manically. “How was your day, Sweetie? You look tired. You look amazing of course, I mean, obviously, you are amazing, but tired. Which isn’t a bad thing. You should have a spa break. There’s this great place in the alps, we could go. Have a couple of days skiing and weird ass skin treatments and-”

“Tony-”

“-or not. You could take your assistant. Or your sister. Or hell, both. Take Hill too. We hired her last week, right? Have a girl’s weekend. Or week. A few days shopping in Paris and then to the spa to recuperate?”

“Tony, you know I can’t just take a week off.”

“What’s the point in being CEO if you can’t get away when you need to? I took weeks off all the time. No one cared.”

She laughs dryly. “They did care. They rang me to tell me all about it.”

A bolt of guilt goes through him, souring his stomach and he’s wishes he hadn’t drained his own glass so quickly. “Well then, you should carry on the proud tradition of giving your assistant such character building experience. C’mon, Pepp, play hooky with me tomorrow.” He leans forward, elbow on the table and chin on his fist, perfectly posed. “I’ll make it worth your while.”

The smile she gives him back is pained. Strained. He hasn’t changed her mind. “I can’t, Tony.”

His arm slips from the table, spine straightening as he feels his mouth flatten, face going rigid. “This is it.”

Pepper leans forward, open now as she wasn’t a moment ago, imploring. “Tony, don’t. It’s not- It isn’t-”

“It’s not you, it’s me,” he sing songs. “I’ve heard the speech.”

“No. _No_. It’s both of us, Tony, just like everything else in this relationship.”

“Both of-” for an instant – just an instant – there’s a swell of hope, of light, in his heart. “If I did something, Pepper, I can change it. I can- You’re the most important thing, you know that.”

She shakes her head, gazing fixedly at the table, at the spoon she’s turning over and over in her fingers, glinting as it reflects the flickering candles. “No.” This time, all but inaudible.

“I can.”

“No, Tony, you can’t. And I’m not strong enough.”

“Not strong enough for _what_?”

She looks up from the spoon in her hand, though her fingers tighten over it until the knuckles turn white. He eyes are red, tears sliding from them, though her voice doesn’t waver. “I love you, Tony. I love you very dearly and I always will. I’m not strong enough to love Iron Man too.”

“I can stop being Iron Man.” The words are out almost before he knows he’s going to say them.

She smiles at him, kind and beautiful and understanding without pitying. “Can you?”

Tony opens his mouth to agree because he can, of course he can, he would do anything for Pepper, would give up anything for her, would cut off his own arm for her, and in the second between instant agreement and happily ever after, he remembers the feeling of flying, _soaring over the ocean, racing the dolphins skipping through the waves,_ he remembers the blood on his hands _and bombs in a cave in the desert and how many people had he hurt, can he really stop atoning_ , and Yinsen _who believed he could be better._

The second of pause is answer enough.

“You are Iron Man,” Pepper says quietly, and this time there is a slight hitch to her voice.

“But I love you,” Tony says, sounding small and baffled to his own ears.

Pepper stands then, walking around the table towards him and bending to kiss his forehead like she has so many times before. “I never doubted it. You’re an incredible man, Tony. You’re amazing, and you deserve someone who can love all parts of you, not someone who’ll hold you back.”

“You don’t-”

“I will.”

He leans his head against her, arms around her and face buried in her middle. “I love you,” he says again, hopelessly.

She kisses him again and he can feel her tears on the back of his neck, hot where his skin has gone icy cold as though Pepper's taking part of him with her. “I love you too, Tony. You’re wonderful. Goodbye.”

He doesn’t watch as she leaves, can’t. He sits until the candles burn down and out and then he sits in the dark until the sun rises.

He’s stiff when he stands. “JARVIS?” he says, voice cracked and hoarse _because he should have drank some water in the last few hours._

“Yes, sir?”

Tony rubs a hand across his red eyes. _Must start sleeping at night, going to lose my looks_ and stands up straight and confident and focussed. “Call the contractors. We’ve got some redecorating to do.” _He doesn’t need a girlfriend anyway._

 


End file.
